


Wish You Were Here

by Viridian5



Category: Harsh Realm
Genre: Antagonism, Humor, M/M, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-06-13
Updated: 2000-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 08:09:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hobbes is far from home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wish You Were Here

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the Pilot episode and "Leviathan."
> 
> The "Dear Sophie" mental letters are part of canon. Imagine _the_ most pretentious _X-Files_ voiceover possible made condescending and even more pretentious as Hobbes "writes" to his fiancee about his time in Harsh Realm. There are plenty of times when I'd like to slap him, but never more so than when he's doing one of those letters. I'd originally intended this story to be a parody of the "Dear Sophie" moments, but it changed on me....
> 
> I didn't like that Mike's partner's name in canon was "Florence" until Kasha suggested that it might be for Florence Nightingale. It seemed like such a Mike thing to nickname her that, that I felt better about it.
> 
> _The Crow: Salvation_ soundtrack helped me finish this.
> 
> Thanks to R for the conversations, synopses, and helping me shape this story into something that would make sense to someone not me. Thanks to Laura for a recommendation on a further reader-friendly refinement. Thanks to Kasha for some good suggestions and Florence Nightingale.

_"Everything sucks again.  
Well, these are dark days, my friend.  
Just tell me all those pretty lies,  
Protect me from the downside..."_  
 -- "Everything Sucks (Again)" by Pitchshifter  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------

I turned to face him long before Mike came up close enough to whisper, "Shift change." My first shift of night watch my first night had ended with an arm around my neck, the world turning upside down as I was dropped to the ground, and Mike sitting on me. It was the punishment for not realizing that he was sneaking up on me.

He didn't hurt me that night, not physically. He didn't need to. The shame taught me better than anything.

I was watch. It didn't matter that Mike never made a sound and wore clothing that made him a piece of the night; I should have been paying better attention.

He'd pronounced me fucking useless, a liability, said he didn't care if I got myself terminated, but I could get him and Florence killed too. I wasn't hard enough or cold enough or _there_ enough. He needed to be able to trust that I had my head on straight and would be watching their backs like I was supposed to.

He was right.

Dying here in this virtual world would make us just as dead as in the real world.

I left him without a word and settled into the bedroll he'd just been in, drinking in the warmth he'd left behind. I was so tired, but wired tired, the kind that kept you up. My eyes kept springing back open every time I tried to close them. I needed to sleep, because being a zombie in the Realm got you dead. They wouldn't tolerate me nodding off tomorrow while we were on the move.

Damn, but I wish I could jerk off. That always put me to sleep afterward, but I had Mike awake a few feet away and Florence lying nearby. Too close, and I've always been one loud son of a bitch.

Mike would pop a vein if I drew Santiago's troops on us by moaning too loud.

Sophie used to laugh at how noisy I got....

I knew what I could do. Mike got disgusted with my "daydreaming," but it kept me going, calmed me down. Telling her my day, or at least an edited version of it, made me remember why I was here, what I was doing, and what she meant to me. Sometimes I almost felt like she could hear my mental letters to her, that maybe she took comfort in them.

They comforted me.

I closed my eyes and started a new mental letter:

//Dearest Sophie,

//I want you to know that I will get home to you. I'll find a way no matter what it takes. I think of you all the time.

//Life in Harsh Realm is mostly mind-numbing tedium punctuated with moments of sheer terror. We spend a lot of time running and hiding, which is always combined with looking for food and other supplies. Hunger is such a constant companion that I barely notice the burning knot in my stomach anymore.

//Hiding, expecting to be captured any day, wears you down. Aside from Santiago's troops, we also have to worry about bounty hunters and regular civilians turning us in for the sizable rewards on our heads. Who wouldn't jump at the chance to curry favor with the despot who rules this whole world? It leaves us unable to trust anyone beyond our small group.

//No wonder Mike's always so cranky.

//In any case, our frustration and the whole world being our enemy often leaves us angry in no real direction. We blew up at one another again today. I'd been giving suggestions as to where we could go next, while Mike shot them down one after another with a sneer. "How about you trust the guy who's been living here instead of assuming you know everything?" he said. I think that Mike has been away from the discipline of being part of a unit for so long that he's forgotten teamwork.

//He didn't appreciate that insight either. "Look, you little bastard, Florence and I defend the group and scavenge for supplies. The fucking dog is even earning his place now by bringing in small game."

//"You're kidding," I answered. Dexter must have been getting in touch with his wild roots.

//"Do I look like I'm kidding? So if we ever get desperate for food, I'm not going for the dog, who's at least useful. No, I'm gonna kill you. You don't have much meat on you, but it's better than nothing." Then he shook his head in disgust and walked away.

//You shouldn't worry about me, dear one. Mike's all bark, at least with me. Besides, it's impossible for him to use me for food in this virtual world, not with the way the program was written. I'm safe from him.//

Safe....

Sleep washed over me like a warm tide.

  


* * *

//Dearest Sophie,

//We live a life on the knife's edge, ever in the path of danger, yet there's comfort to be found in the company of my comrades and the crackle of our tiny fire, risked only because Mike judged us to be far enough from discovery. Our food tonight is meager, yet almost filling. I'm not yet certain if Mike is a better cook than I expected or if hunger spices the food.

//I think having our first hot meal in four days helps.

//It was something Mike had hunted down. Perhaps you're wondering how he had anything to cook since I told you that people are deleted, dissolving in a burst of static, when they're killed here. It turns out that people may not leave a body when they die here, but, fortunately for us, animals do. We'd starve otherwise, since there are only so many cans of food in this world. Mike told me that the animals are actually Tools and Backdrop files, so they didn't run by the same rules. So instead of having Latin taxonomic names like in our world, animals here actually have names made up of letters, numbers, periods, and slashes. Same thing for plants.

//It made me wonder about Dexter....

//In any case, tonight's dinner was exceptionally good, and I made certain to tell Mike so. Michael Pinocchio is a creature gone feral, but kindness and some civility might bring him back. I asked what our meat was, that it tasted so delicious. I don't think I've ever had it before.

//"Ra-- Rabbit." He smiled. "Gutter rabbit."

//He actually has an engaging smile. It's heartening to think this harsh world hasn't beaten that out of him. "It seems a bit small for rabbit," I said. Once the thought of eating rabbit would have been repugnant to me, but I'm adjusting.

//Mike shrugged and briefly bit his lip. "It's a hard world." I could swear that Florence rolled her eyes, but it might have been a trick of the flickering firelight.//

Outside my head, Mike suddenly said, "Shut up, Hobbes."

"Hunh?" I'd been silent the whole time.

"I can hear you thinking again. Fuck, half the world can hear you thinking."

"Oh, sure."

"You don't think I can? Then you ask Sophie how she'd deal with it if I kicked you so hard that you'd never have a shot at making little Hobbeses again."

I just stared at him, stunned, then turned to Florence, who was looking anywhere I wasn't sitting. Dexter grabbed some of the meat from my plate and ran off.

Yeah, sometimes it sucks to be me.

How the hell did Mike do that?

  


* * *

//Dearest Sophie,

//I know I mention Mike a lot, but he _is_ my most constant companion who can talk back, and I find him fascinating. At first glance he seems to be part Spaghetti Western gunslinger, part Han Solo, part Alex Krycek. He tries to be hard and ruthless, but underneath lies a strong core of conscience, duty, nobility. He doesn't want to care, but he does. There's a deeply decent man buried in there.

//I can usually twist him around to doing what I want, the right thing. It's getting easier with time.

//Mike's tenacious, with what he once called a cockroach's will to survive. No one can do a better job of locating the things we need to live. He finds things, or they find him. In many ways, his willingness to do the harder, darker things helps me retain some kind of innocence here.

//He thinks I'm not aware of that.

//He treats Florence with the utmost care and respect, a regard he shows no one else, even if he does call her "Florence" as a joke about her healing abilities. But then, I don't think she ever told him her name, so I suppose Florence Nightingale is as good a name as any. What they have doesn't seem to be love in the way men and women usually love, but neither is it simply the deep bond of comrades under fire together. It's also not chivalrous; he trusts her to defend herself as an equal. I don't understand it at all.

//They argue sometimes, in a way that seems one-sided to me. He uses his intense, low voice--he never yells at her as he does me--while she just stares at him and makes a rare hand gesture. I don't know how she makes her opinions known that way, yet they always come to an agreement somehow.

//They move in on a target together effortlessly synchronized, barely needing gestures or words, each _knowing_ where the other is. By contrast, I never seem to be in the right place covering the right direction. Mike wouldn't trust me with his jacket, let alone his life.

//I don't know why he's so dead set against going home. Don't worry; he doesn't plan to stop me from leaving; he just doesn't intend to go himself.

//What's waiting for him in the real world that Harsh Realm is preferable?

//Mike flinches away from my eyes, my touch, my questions, without trying to be obvious about it. After all, it doesn't fit the persona he tries to project.

//Something broke him, and I don't know what it is. I want to know.

//At times I think he feels that his soul has been warped and debased. I don't think he's accustomed to feeling that way, to caring about it. You can only see his misery if you notice the sag to his mouth or that drowning look in his eyes. Florence will sometimes pat his shoulder then, but she offers no other comfort. It makes me wish I could do something.

//I think I'm growing on him.

//I sometimes wonder what you'd think of him if you met. I think you'd like--//

An arm just about clotheslining me at chest level stopped my train of thought. Mike. He used a walking stick to clear leaves away from the path in front of me and reveal an open bear trap. If he hadn't stopped me, the metal teeth would be buried in my leg right now.

"Daydreaming again," he muttered. Florence looked disappointed in me too.

Damn. "Shouldn't we spring it so no one else wanders in?"

"Someone set this. If he comes back and finds it sprung with nothing in it, it's gonna make him wonder. Unless you want to throw the dog into it."

He had to put a dig at Dexter in there. He thought I never noticed him feeding "the dog" on the sly.

"So what?" My only defense when he thought I was doing something stupid was to give attitude right back.

"So what, the man might ask questions about who's wandering around here. If he's connected, he might go talk to someone who talks to Santiago. This is Harsh Realm. Traps don't just spring by themselves here; somebody or something's always caught in one." Mike grinned darkly. "But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he's just an innocent trapper hoping for dinner. We could spring the trap and take food off his table."

Ah, the famous Mike Pinocchio sarcasm. It could be lethal, most of all because _everything_ he said in his low, Clint Eastwood, Tough Guy voice sounded vaguely sarcastic, with the real sarcasm sounding like it verged on disgust.

I wasn't hard enough, cold enough, _there_ enough.... "We'll leave it alone."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." He snapped off a salute that reached new levels on the lethal scale.

I was feeling pretty fucking lethal myself. I didn't know what made me angrier: the way Mike made me look stupid so often or the fact that I kept leaving him openings to do it.

  


* * *

//Dear Sophie,

//Today we made a great find, some kind of military warehouse buried in shifting rubble. Barely looted. When I return to the real world, I wonder how long it will take me to become re-accustomed to plenty, to simply buying what I need when I need it.

//Or to using paper money to pay for it.

//I've never seen Mike so happy before, especially after he'd found the gasoline. He immediately organized us into search parties and demanded we make inventory lists. The limited space in his car required careful decisions on what we could take with us.

//Have you ever taken a moment to appreciate how wondrous canned food can be? I never did before I arrived here. I found a bounty of such food and went to notify Mike. When I saw him, he appeared to be checking the power levels on a car battery. Sparks flew off the clamps. Then he looked up, saw me--//

I had to stop there. Find some way to cut around it and go forward because I couldn't tell her what came next, couldn't even say it to the Sophie who's only in my head. He _smiled_ at me in a way he'd never smiled before and made a beckoning motion with his hand, while I... I ran. Because part of me wanted to move toward him, feel those sparks or the clamps on me, the complicated touch of pleasure/pain.

Because I felt a sudden low thrill of lust.

I don't want Mike Pinocchio. I'm engaged to a beautiful woman I love dearly. This was just frustrated lust, just the result of being away from her and unable to jerk off while I had two other people always so close by my side, with at least one almost always awake to keep watch. The only private time I got was when I kept watch, and I could hardly use that time to masturbate. My libido only chose Mike because Florence is so otherworldly in her silence and impossible ability to heal.

I do not want Mike Pinocchio.

I give my nipple another surreptitious but vicious twist, unable to decide whether I was doing it as punishment or a tease.

I felt something hit my back before a shuddering jolt of _something_ ran through my body. It hurt, it felt good, it made my hair stand on end.... When it ended I was left lying on my back, gasping, staring up at Mike.

His smug, dark eyes swept over me contemptuously as he revealed the taser in his hand. "If I were an enemy, we'd all be dead now, Hobbes. Daydreaming can get us killed."

He pulled the taser leads off me and walked away without looking back, a gesture of contempt, his way of saying I was no threat to him. Like hell I could let that pass. I got my head back together as he reached the door and charged him before he could leave. I didn't catch him completely by surprise, but the sound he made as I knocked the air out of him satisfied me.

The fight that followed was a blur of motion, all me going on instinct, trading punches, grabbing his ratty commando sweater and shoving him against the wall. Anger and adrenaline stopped me from feeling the solid blows he landed on me; even his head butt only dazed me for a moment. Some part of me knew I'd feel them in spades later, but it meant nothing to me now. When one punch rocked my head back, I just spat blood and kept going.

Mike fought like he was fighting for his life, ruthless and almost desperate. He'd started out cool and inhuman but something had snapped somewhere along the way. Thank God he kept _enough_ of an even head that he didn't go for one of his guns and just shoot me. Still, he struck hard enough to put and keep me down, but my high kept me from going. But I had to stop him before I started to feel the damage, so I finally managed to pin him against the wall, standing and leaning so close to him that he could barely move. He kept trying to throw or twitch me off, but I clung.

I realized that I was humping him only when he started to smile, his teeth gleaming above his bloody split lip. Sense returned to his eyes as he seemed to feel that he'd regained some control over the situation, like my hard-on gave him power over me. I had to prove him wrong.

"Somebody's happy to see me. Is _this_ what's been wrong with you lately?" he asked with a smirk. Even thrusting against him as hard as I could didn't get rid of that look on his face. I liked the way it made him grunt, though.

"This isn't about you, so don't be flattered," I snarled.

"Of course. God, you're as shy as a little girl. You didn't have to hold back on my account, you know. I'm supposed to be shocked that you'd jerk off? Grow up. It's not like I haven't heard it all before." Mike's hand suddenly settled the last place I ever expected it and grabbed hold of my cock through my pants. "I could give you a hand, if it would get your head on straight."

"Yeah, I'm sure you're good at using your hand."

"Ouch. I'm mortally wounded by your sparkling, razor-sharp wit. And here I was going to help you out of the kindness of my heart."

"You have no heart."

"Yup."

As his fingers started to move, I couldn't help pushing into his grip. Anyone's hand on my dick would feel good.

Then I realized that he was hard too. It made me smile darkly. "_This_ isn't about me either, huh?"

"Nope." He breathed in deeply as I rubbed against him. "The difference between us is that I don't let simple, stupid horniness fuck me up."

"No?" I had to prove him wrong. My next rub pinned and ground his hand between our cocks. His breath caught. "What was that, then?"

"It's just getting off, Hobbes."

"Then let's get off." It wouldn't be real sex, just jerking off with someone else's hand. Dick was dick anyway. Besides, I couldn't let him keep looking at me like that.

I had him unzipped and my hand in his pants in moments. His eyes glittered darkly at me as he did the same to me. We started to move at the same time, and it gave me the surreal feeling that this was a race, and the winner would be the one who came last.

The winner had to be me.

I'd never felt anything quite like his hand stroking down my cock before. Really. His fingers were rougher and more callused than mine, the texture making every touch feel deeper somehow. If I hadn't already been slick from waiting and our aggressive bit of foreplay, it would be painful; even now it trod that edge. Sometimes he stroked, and sometimes he gripped. Sometimes he toyed with my balls. It wasn't fair that he was so good at this too, that he could still yank me around so easily. I bit my lip to trap the noises inside.

His cock was hot, hard, and shuddering under my hand. Its soft, soft skin showed me that he really wasn't as hard and callused all over as he sometimes seemed to be. I worked him over, using every trick I knew, but the most acknowledgment I got out of him came in the form of deeper breathing and his eyes half closing. Stoic. Damn him; I wanted a reaction.

Then he turned his head to the side, looking away from me, his eyes opening to look at something, smiling, but I was too distracted by all the pale skin revealed at his collar to look for myself. I wanted to bite into his neck. No. I just wanted to nibble, really. No. No. I didn't want to do any of those things.

I wanted to call on Sophie's memory like a talisman, but I didn't want to bring the thought of her here, while Mike and I jerked one another off. Sex with her was love, not this raw, needing thing.

This raw, needing, incredible thing....

I felt orgasm start at the base of my spine before it ripped through me. So much for staying power. To my shame, I felt a shout start to rip through me too, but Mike clamped his lips over mine to stop it, swallowing my screams. I could taste the iron tang of his blood and my blood, and this was _dangerous_, but I couldn't pull away. He smelled like gasoline.... Mike shuddered convulsively, coming as quietly as he did everything else.

With how hard I leaned on him I should have pushed him through the wall. I felt warm and loose, incredible. Everything was right with the world.

Then I remembered that the world wasn't really the world, just a holographic representation I was trapped in. And I realized that Mike Pinocchio had trumped me again, as a hysterical part of myself repeated, "This isn't cheating on Sophie. This isn't cheating," over and over again. Then I pulled back and saw Florence off to the side, gun in hand, watching us. How long had she been there? More importantly, how much did she see? I couldn't read anything in her eyes before she turned away and left the room.

Thank God embarrassment wasn't terminal.

"Are you all right?" Mike asked, sounding as close to kind as he could allow.

"Yeah." Oh God, he'd turned his head to see Florence, hadn't he? If I asked him about it, I could just see him explaining it by saying that _someone_ had to keep watch while we were distracted. I wanted to bang my forehead against the wall. My relations with these two had been tough and complicated to begin with; now I had to throw this into it?

Mike gently pushed me away and tucked himself back in. We were both a sticky mess, but we'd planned on cleaning our stuff while we were here anyway. "It's just getting off, Hobbes," he said. "Nothing to angst about."

"Then what was your tongue in my mouth for?" I had to ask as he started to walk away.

He looked over his shoulder and grinned. "Once I finally managed to shut you up, I had to take advantage."

Sophie never felt this far away before, and I've never been so far from home....

 

### End

 

_"You don't gotta be alone at night.  
You don't gotta suck your thumb so tight.  
I said, 'There's room enough for one more on my tail,' yeah.  
I think you need a little knock in the snout.  
I think you need a little inside-out..."_  
 -- "Big God" by Monster Magnet 


End file.
